Val, my close friends who know about the affair are happy we are going to MC, but ask me if I am going to get treatment. Of course, no one really knows what is going on. I know I have to get therapy, but I keep making excuses about why I cant right now. I lost weight and find myself not really caring about anything very much. Thank God, I am not a total crying mess like before (just a little crying mess).

I feel like I had to put my emotions on pause in order to support him. If I ever bring up anything specifically about the affair, he does his usual of either walking away or getting super angry. Then he always throws out "If you are never going to forgive me, why are we going through this process?". It is almost as if he wants me to say "leave then". I constantly tell him that I am trying to move forward, but that some days are harder than others. But it really annoys me that he is constantly looking for the escape route. I have brought it up to him numerous times,including in therapy. It annoys the crap out of me when he flashes that card just because he does not agree with what i am saying or it is too intense for him.

I rejected therapy at first. I was too ashamed for staying (!) and also, I had completely lost trust in the human race, which was really me not trusting myself, but it manifests the same way. Eventually though, you can't live with that kind of bile. Also, I needed a place to express my grieving process away from friends and family who felt powerless to help, and away from my husband who basically did the same thing you describe your husband doing.

My H knew then what I was going through, but he couldn't handle it on top of everything else. I too put my emotions on hold but, getting cliched here, it is possible to choke on your own pride. You think you're strong enough to handle it until you get your husband on solid ground, but the sad reality is that you can't, nor should you even try.

What you are describing with your husband is the constant push/pull. He really doesn't want you to leave but he also doesn't want to put you through anymore pain so he pushes, tests, and infuriates the ever living hell out of you. ALL THE MORE TO GET A THERAPIST OF YOUR OWN.

Think about it, this is someone, a mental health professional, with no skin in your game, who is entirely devoted to listening and helping you sort your shit out for a whole hour - as any times a week as you can afford!! (I went twice a week for awhile). It's a brilliant thing. My therapist eventually set me free, but while I was going, it was the mental equivalent of a good workout, a spa day, and a big fat drink all wrapped into one awesome hour. And I didn't have to do the give and take of problems with friends and family. I didn't have to watch a face full of pity over my situation from those emotionally invested who really don't understand and secretly thought I should just leave. I didn't have to worry about the judgment of my actions. It was all about me-me-me, my problems, my feelings, and then helping me work through solutions. In the first visit I realized that my marriage was rarely ever about me. It was enormously freeing.

So I took my process elsewhere, away from my husband. Eventually he got on solid ground and we were able to deal with rebuilding. And just a month ago, out of the blue, my H acknowledged, for the first time, how awful last year must have been for me and how he was so happy I stayed and that we are working it out.

The monster in my head comes out to play every so often. We spouses get set off too and it's not always something we are cognizant of. I don't take it out on him anymore, but then, he is better at recognizing when something is wrong and we can now talk about it.

Our 10th anniversary was last weekend. My H was coming off a serious episode, something triggered the hell out of him, but he was able to put that aside for a day so we could celebrate. And then the next day, it was back to work with his therapist.

Last year sucked, seriously, fuck 2012...2013 is certainly better on a multitude of levels. I'm not convinced it ever becomes perfect, or like the way we thought it would be, but it's pretty good - better, it's definitely more honest and I will take that.

So rant it over. Get into therapy. Stop putting it off. Find a good therapist and I promise that after a lot of kleenex, ranting, and raving, you will eventually feel better.

The fact of the matter is that you deserve to talk about it and work through it - and get your needs met. MS helped me understand him - and it found me a network of betrayed spouses who had the same little (BIG) secret to keep. But standard fair, run of the mill infidelity support is ESSENTIAL as well.

Overwhelmed, it is good that you are here. You can find women here who know your pain.

I sometimes would catch myself trying to get comfort frm my husband after all the shit that happened but it was extremely frustrating because a. trying to get comfort or understanding from someone (h) who is in so much pain is a waste of time. B. Trying to get comfort from the person (again husband) who cause me so much pain was ridiculous of me. C. Husband couldn't really handle or understand the pain or didn't want to because it hurt him too much to know much he hurt me.

I find my friends in my COSA group and a few of the ladies I met here to be the greatest source of comfort. My friends of 30 yrs who haven't been here can't understand. My family can't understand. Like Val, I feel shame for staying. I can't tell my friends and family what caused my husband to go down this dark dark path beause I promised I wouldn't tell anyone. Hubby and I have an agreement though, that I can tell any and all to my recovery friends and therapist.

Find women who have been there and a good therapist who specializes in abuse or sex addcition. They seem to be the only ones who get this shit. They will save you.

Thanks ladies. I know what i have do, i just have to force myself to do it.About a month after everything he had some family in town visiting from out of town they wanted to hang out,but anytime H would ask about meeting them for dinner, I would freak out.Then he would have to cancel. I finally realized I didn't want to face his family member and wife because I was embarrassed that his immediate family had disclosed about the affair. I was ashamed, my pride and dignity was crushed. We both have very large families,so we are constantly invited to events, but I refuse 3 out of 4 times. I just don't feel like facing people and pretending everything is ok. I know it is not their fault,but I don't feel like pretending. I go because I know it is not fair to the kids to be cut off from their extended family.No one knows about the CSA except for us and therapist. I have PM'd Esposa,but I have not really spoken to anyone else. Your right,I know I need to find some kind of outlet.

Oh you just tapped into a whole other can of worms there: The Big Show!

The Big Show is the big damn farce you and your H put on to make everyone around you comfortable and pretend that everything is just shiny!

I did that for awhile, mostly because people really do love what they think our marriage represents, but also I thought that if my H could see how much people loved us as a couple, he would snap the hell out of it. But as time went on, I began to resent The Big Show, and resent how well my husband played his part, and then I hated myself for having anything to do with it. And then I stopped playing altogether.

You retreating is a good protective measure, you don't have to put on an act. But get that outlet (therapy!), have your say (lots of therapy!), you might find, in time, that you're ready to get back out there and socialize.

Hey overwhelmed, val, esposa, lucylives and others.... It's nice to be back on the site a bit and reading some of your posts. I have a few things to add. Forgive me if I sound a little pompous. I'm pretty pumped up after the nice things Esposa said on the previous page. (Thanks.)

Cheating. I've been getting EMDR for the last year. It's a kind of therapy, and in my experience it's very, very effective. I do believe that I'm getting a new brain, and I want this new brain! In part as a result of EMDR, I think I'm beginning to understand why I cheated. So, let's start by rolling the clock back to when I was 10 when the abuse happened to me. I was ashamed. I thought I was to blame. I was also scared and the abuse was extremely painful physically. But it was really the combination of physical and emotional pain the hurt so bad, I think. The abuser told me it was my fault. He also said it was "what people did." At the time the abuse happened, I wasn't a sexual being. I hadn't been through puberty. I didn't know what it was like to have an orgasm. And when he had one, I didn't know why he acted the way he did. All I knew was that it was fucked up and wrong and awkward and strange. And that it hurt. And that I was mortally afraid and embarrassed, humiliated. I wasn't going to TELL anyone. A million times I said to myself that I would take that secret "to my grave." That was the phrase I repeated a million times.

It's hard, as a kid or a teen or young adult, to have an enormous pain without talking about it. The pain will try to come out... in the form of tears or other expressions... and so a person finds themselves lying about the cause of the tears or histrionics. I made up all kinds of stories, lies. Those lies served another purpose, too. Lies help a person maintain the "shame cycle."

So remember when I was humiliated and ashamed of the pain I'd experienced? I think what I did... and what lots of people do... is chose to believe I was marked, ruined, cursed and just plain bad. That, to me, was the best explanation I could find for what had happened to me. In a way, it makes sense, because it kept life predictable. And it let me focus on things I could sort of control. I have learned (and embraced) the use of the term "magical thinking" to describe that idea. It's not true. I wasn't assaulted because I was bad. I was assaulted because a predator found an opportunity to hurt me. And he took it. Period. But it's a scary thing to think that any of us, at any time, could be victimized. That there's really NOTHING we can do to protect ourselves... or our children... or anyone. But with my magical thinking, I could give some shape to my own destiny. I could say, "Well, what happened was because I was bad. So, I'll be good instead." But that sadly doesn't get rid of the emotional pain, nor does it help hide the truth. And so I'd tell lies and then be ashamed of myself, which would once again prove to me that I was bad/cursed/wrong/tainted/ruined and then I would resolve again to do better, to be better, to not lie, all that stuff... and then I'd tell more lies and the cycle would continue.

The other thing you have to realize about rape or sexual assault is that it doesn't have anything to do with "sex," except that it happens to involve sexual parts of the body. I wasn't even aware of what sex actually was when I got targeted. I didn't even know what the grooming was for when I was getting groomed! And when the sexual assault was happening, there was nothing sexual happening INSIDE me. Only pain. Humiliation. Anger. Fear.

But when your boundaries are trampled by someone, they stay gone. It's like anything. Like if you learn to ride a bike. You won't be intimidated by riding a bike again. If you get raped, sex loses its shine, it's newness, and the inhibitions that come with newness are also gone. It's odd to think of, but it's true. I've never been aware of sex in a different way, but there you have it. Anyway, my own boundarylessness has always freaked me out, because to me it was always a sign of my own shame/badness/curse/ruination. And as a result, I think I was always simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by boundarylessness in other people.

I knew I could basically fuck anything or anyone at the drop of a hat, and I didn't want to cheat on my wife, so I would walk away from any situation that seemed to push those weird boundarylessness buttons for me (this long before I acknowledged CSA and got therapy and stuff). But I always would sneak porn or masturbate by myself or whatever, and I think I would do it to feel ashamed. To at first feel lustful and then ashamed and angry at myself.

Anyway, I cheated with a woman who I don't feel attracted to, except that I was floored by her boundarylessness. She was married. Had a little girl. She had ABSOLUTELY no boundaries. She told me she had been raped in college. And I think it's true. I think she actually decided to target people, including me, because that's what she told me. She told me she was dangerous. This was a year or months before the affair. But the truth is that I could have stopped the affair by not having it. I'm not trying to dish blame onto her and escape from it for myself. BUT, I do think that the impulses that came from my own shame cycle (and feeling of my own inevitable failure) plus my own lack of decent sexual boundaries and her sexual aggression are together what caused the affair. For me, it was about shame/feeling degraded/cursed. For instance, this is pretty personal, but I love all kinds of sex with my wife. I didn't want to do anything except fuck and be done with this person. I wasn't interested. I didn't want to touch or see her skin, for instance. Not breasts. Nothing. I actually found her repulsive and disgusting. And myself. And yet I did it.

Getting caught. I think I told lies that would catch up to me so I would feel the shame of it all, and I think I cheated knowing I'd get caught. The way I got caught was, from what I'm told, the cheater's husband used a spyware program to see her emails to me (this was after the sexual part of the affair had ended). He thought he could see that there was too much emotional connection there. He confronted her. She told him about the affair. He stormed out of the house. Came back in again. And then stormed back out. She called me, because she thought he might have come inside to get a gun and headed to my house. I then told my wife in the lamest possible way. I first lied and said he thought there had been an affair but there wasn't. Then I said we had kissed. Then I said we had sex once. And then I told her about everything. One of the best things I ever heard was my wife saying not to have anything to do with the cheater ever again. I called the cheater and said, Don't ever call me. Don't have anything to do with me. Ever again. Period. It was like I had been set free! I knew I needed therapy big time. And my wife made me stay in the house. Not in her bed. No way. I stayed in the basement or in our son's room. But I stayed in the house, and I got us a therapy appointment right away. I just started calling therapists and telling them I had an affair and I wanted to save my marriage and keep my family. I think getting caught was something I was trying to do, in a strange sort of way. (And I think someone leaving naked photos of a woman on their phone like your H sounds a LOT like someone trying to get caught.)

Learning to hear and express feelings. It has taken me a long time to hear my wife express her feelings without feeling myself like everything she says is a referendum on my self-worth. It's not. Sometimes she just needs to express herself. Sometimes she's mad and disappointed. It's hard for me to let her have her feelings, but I also know that it's one way that I can support her, and I want to be supportive of her.

Recovering from abuse. It's HARD to recover from abuse. Very hard. Abuse sucks. Sometimes it seems like the abuse leaves all these red-hot iron bars in my body and my mind and emotions. So someone can say something. Or I can think or say something or do something, and all of a sudden I'll find myself reeling from this tremendous pain! And I'm like, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?! But once you start to realize that your reactions are actually based on experiences long ago and not on whatever is happening right now that happens to trigger them, you can start to get a handle on yourself. There's a lot more I could get into on the recovery end of things, but I've written so much already....

Rebuilding a life. This is just really important to me. A person has to be accountable to other people in their life, every single day. I want to be a good partner for my wife every day. And I want her to be a good partner to me. I want to be a good dad. That sort of thing. You have to always keep your eyes forward, your mind forward. It is possible to rebuild a life. We've had a good five years since the affair. I think I'm getting stronger and stronger all the time. My marriage still has ups and downs. And who knows where it'll go from here. But what I know is that I love my spouse and I'm committed to this relationship, to making it work, and to keep building our life together.

It can happen. It really can. But you've got to seriously work toward it. And you've got to raise new boundaries around yourself around the sexual/sharing stuff and tear down the boundaries that the abuse created around honesty/trust.

Good luck! I haven't read this over, but take it all with a grain of salt. I guess I'm just in a good mood today.

Robert1000, it's like you are saying H's story. He said he was happy he was "caught", that it was a relief. For someone who has not been in a situation like that, that is very hard to comprehend. First he told me,she sent him the pics, then it was they just kissed, then it was they got a hotel but he chickened out,now we are at he got a BJ but no sex. Obviously, I don't believe him and I tell him his story is BS, he tells me he got grossed out with her. She also told him her H was coming after him with a gun. Which was not true the H,never found out. She went on vacation with her H and children two weeks after all the drama. The disturbing part is that he has to see her everyday because they are co-workers. Now, she is purposely trying to make him uncomfortable by trying to be alone with him constantly, even though management has asked her not to. I know it makes my H feel weird because all these other coworkers are disclosing that they had sex with her as well. I think he feels like he was "duped". So he comes home angry and frustrated and is mean to me. Then I react, we have a big fight, he threatens to leave, I cry and beg him to keep our family intact, of course he stays, then I feel like dummy begging a man to stay with me. I have become his emotional punching bag because of the stress at work. Sometimes I wonder if he really wants us to work out because he doesn't act like it. There are good days and bad days.

The disclosure about the CSA is very fresh (3months), so when I read all of the post including the wives post, it seems like the situation getting better is a galaxy away. I am going to get my own therapy because I am very angry. I also need to stop letting him treat me like dirt because is frustrated. I realized today, that his threats are not real. He just wants to pick fights with me. There are too many things going on right now. It is hard to look forward sometimes.Robert1000, I really appreciate your insight. I'm so glad you responded. Thanks for all the wives for sharing their experiences. This forum has changed my perspective on so many things. I can honestly tell you that if wasn't for this site, I don't know where I would be. I can't share with anyone else aside from what I read and type here. For a while after I found out, I thought I was losing my mind.I am very thankful that I found this forum. I sincerely mean that.

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